More than 30 villagers, including women and children, have been killed in an ethnic-related attack in western Cameroon, local sources said on Monday.

The massacre unfolded over the weekend at Bakinjaw near the Nigerian border, said Reverend Fonki Samuel Forba, the spokesman of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, whose account was confirmed by an NGO and a military source.

The attack was rooted in a land dispute between the Oliti and Messaga Ekol ethnic groups, Forba said in a statement sent to AFP.

"The Oliti people attacked and killed some Messaga Ekol people on their farms on the 29th April 2022 and the Messaga Ekol people retaliated," he said. 

"The Oliti people then mobilized and got the backup of hired armed men and launched... very violent, inhuman and destructive attacks on the Messaga Ekol people.

"Over 30 people were killed including children, girls, men, women and old people. Some were beheaded. About five Nigerians were killed."

The bloodshed took place in the Akwaya region of the Southwest Region, which with the neighbouring Northwest Region is in the grip of a nearly five-year-old insurrection by anglophone separatists.

A local non-governmental organisation and a military source confirmed the details given by Forba, but said there was no known link between the massacre and the separatist violence.